Introduction
Power BI is a cloud-based suite of business analytics tools that lets anyone connect to, visualize, and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding. It connects users to a broad range of live data through easy-to-use dashboards, provides AI-infused automated insights, embedded and interactive reports, and delivers compelling visualizations that bring data big and small to life. Power BI comprises three components:
- A Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop.
- An online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service.
- Power BI mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices.
Comparison of Microsoft Power BI service plans
The available retail pricing plans are described in the following article: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/. The following plans are available for purchase via the CSP channe, available either in monthly or annual subscriptions:
- Power BI Pro
- Power BI Premium Per User
- Power BI Pro for faculty
- Power BI Pro (Nonprofit Staff Pricing)
The following table by Microsoft provides a feature comparison of each Microsoft Power BI plan.
| Feature | Power BI Pro | Power BI Premium per user | Power BI Premium per capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collaboration and Analytics | |||
| Mobile app access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish reports to share and collaborate | Yes | Yes | No |
| Paginated (RDL) reports | No | Yes | Yes |
| Consume content without a per-user license | No | No | Yes |
| On-premises reporting with Power BI Report Server | No | No | Yes |
| Data prep, modeling, and visualization | |||
| Model size limit | 1 GB | 100 GB | 400 GB |
| Refresh rate | 8/day | 48/day | 48/day |
| Connect to 100+ data sources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create reports and visualizations with Power BI Desktop | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Embedding APIs and controls | Yes* | Yes* | Yes* |
| AI visuals | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced AI (text analytics, image detection, automated machine learning) | No | Yes | Yes |
| XMLA endpoint read/write connectivity | No | Yes | Yes |
| Dataflows (direct query, linked and computed entities, enhanced compute engine) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Analyze data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage | No | Yes | Yes |
| Governance and administration | |||
| Data security and encryption | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Metrics for content creation, consumption, and publishing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment pipelines for application lifecycle management | No | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-geo deployment management | No | No | Yes |
| Bring your own key (BYOK) | No | No | Yes |
| Autoscale add-on availability (preview) | No | No | Yes |
| Max storage | 10 GB/user | 100 TB | 100 TB |
More details on Power BI pricing and licensing can be found at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/service-features-license-type.
Sources
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/power-bi-overview
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/power-bi-service-description
